© 2024 Texas Public Radio
Real. Reliable. Texas Public Radio.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Charter School District Fighting To Re-Open

San Antonio School for Inquiry and Creativity
San Antonio School for Inquiry and Creativity students, 2010

The Texas Education Agency held a hearing Friday in Austin for the San Antonio School for Inquiry and Creativity District which the TEA closed Wednesday until further notice. The TEA says the school district is out of compliance with criminal history requirements and has food safety issues.

 

Almost 600 students are currently out of school because of the closure. In addition to the closure, Foundation School Program funding for district has also been suspended.

DeEtta Culbertson is spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency. 

“Depending on the outcome of this hearing today and any further actions at the agency, if parents felt the need to move their children elsewhere, that’ll be there choice” Culbertson says. “They can take their students back to their home school district, re-enroll them in another charter school, home school them, or enroll them in a private school.”

Denise Fritter is SASIC school board president. She says the school has already corrected the issues or is in the process of correcting them.

“We feel very confident in what we presented today,” Fritter says. “In regard to the health inspections, we’ve had numerous health inspections. We’ve passed them a better than a 95% score with each and every health inspection.”

A date for a ruling has not been set.  

Louisa Jonas is an independent public radio producer, environmental writer, and radio production teacher based in Baltimore. She is thrilled to have been a PRX STEM Story Project recipient for which she produced a piece about periodical cicadas. Her work includes documentaries about spawning horseshoe crabs and migratory shorebirds aired on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. Louisa previously worked as the podcast producer at WYPR 88.1FM in Baltimore. There she created and produced two documentary podcast series: Natural Maryland and Ascending: Baltimore School for the Arts. The Nature Conservancy selected her documentaries for their podcast Nature Stories. She has also produced for the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Distillations Podcast. Louisa is editor of the book Backyard Carolina: Two Decades of Public Radio Commentary. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her training also includes journalism fellowships from the Science Literacy Project and the Knight Digital Media Center, both in Berkeley, CA. Most recently she received a journalism fellowship through Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she traveled to Toolik Field Station in Arctic Alaska to study climate change. In addition to her work as an independent producer, she teaches radio production classes at Howard Community College to a great group of budding journalists. She has worked as an environmental educator and canoe instructor but has yet to convince a great blue heron to squawk for her microphone…she remains undeterred.